nD sticks it to traditional gaming giants

What do you do if you’re a developer that gets shut out of the approval process for closed-shop gaming systems? If you’re [Robert Pelloni] you protest first, then establish your own startup to develop a gaming platform that is open and inexpensive. The hardware seen above is a rendering of the nD, a cheap and open gaming handheld. They plan to sell it at cost ($20) and let anyone develop games.

Check out the video after the break to see the pitch. The hardware is sparse; a plastic case and some buttons, a 320×240 LCD screen, a PCB with a system-on-a-chip, and a rechargeable battery. But if you’re writing great games the spartan hardware doesn’t matter (we still love a good game of Metroid when we have the time). Developers will be able to license games for sale in the nD online market. They’ll keep 90% while nD takes it’s 10%. Not a bad deal.

Show me something other than a rendering and remove the words “plan to sell it at cost” and I might (might!) pay attention. Only companies the size of Sony get to sell consoles at or below cost, guys with copies of Blender have to sell things at a profit.

If they can actually produce these and sell them at a pricepoint of $20 I’ll be very surprised. Check out the GP2X Wiz and Caanoo, aswell as the Dingoo. Both have the same concept, and for the Caanoo gamepark tried the appstore idea, but it failed pretty badly.

When I first heard about it, it was $10 for the unit. Then the last time I heard about it, $15… now it’s $20 and it’s been several years since I first heard about it with nothing to show but WORSE renderings since the first ones I saw.

Why do they have to sell it at a profit? The idea is that they’ll be raking in the dough though game sales on their marketplace. Making the platform as cheap as possible is only going to increase market share and game sales (free $$$ in their eyes, minus cost of the web store). Also, it seems like they’re using existing hardware, so R&D costs are low.

I totally agree though, that they need an actual product and not a 3D rendering before anybody should pay attention. I do love the idea, and would immediately jump on-board the development ship once it gets going. Very cool

Slanderer, where does it say he’s not well? Throwing a temper tantrum kind of doesn’t count, and neither do headaches and paranoia, not immediately after you’ve been locked in a room for a month with no human contact and likely not enough daylight to maintain your circadian rhythm. David Blaine’s stunts are similar, if more hardcore, and he frequently finishes them up with a fast trip to the nearest hospital — does this make Blaine mentally ill?

I’ll grant Pelloni appears to have no sense of his own capabilities and a vastly outsized degree of self-importance, but neither of those in itself is particularly strong evidence of mental illness; granted they are listed as potential symptoms of a variety of disorders, but they’re also perfectly reasonable traits to find in someone who is a self-deluded, egotistical jackass.

Speaking from a strictly hardware perspective, this might not be that hard to do with a System On Chip (SOC)setup.
There are enough crappy Chinese Android and Windows CE netbooks and tablets floating around to choke the large animal of your choosing and THAT is largely SOC stuff with some add-ons.

I think simply making it open would attract folks, but it’s going to have to be at least as powerful as a Dingoo A350 or you may as well just get a Dingoo A350 or something along those lines and develop for THAT.

I’m a member of the nD community, and I have been for awhile now… To me it seems as though Bob really doesn’t know what he’s getting into. He has no real spec’s, sdk, or any idea where to get the parts fabricated, yet he wants developers to sign on, claiming they will sell “millions”. He also claims to not have enough resources to publish his game on the PC, yet somehow he does have enough to make a console? I’m still hoping its real and happens, though up to this point he hasn’t done much to dispel anyones fears.

The wiki made me laugh, although im not sure if I should feel sorry for him after basically wasting 5 years of his life after getting so worked up over them not giving him the SDK when he doesnt realise it would probably have been better for him to just release it for free on the PC like cavestory and THEN get it released for the DS (again, like cave story on wiiware).

@ velociostrich – The offical laptop of North Korea!? Thats like saying the offical condom of the Vatican, the offical Ham of Israel, the offical beer of Saudia Arabia, the offical… well you get the idea. Anyway I will buy an nD when I see it in the store for $19.99.

It would be great if this actually happen, but I have my doubts like everyone.

I’m still kicking my sac from when I bought the dingoo. It’s fun and all, but there is only so much that can be done with it. No internet connection, no clock, hard to find chip expansion (minisd), and a relatively dead community.

This is from a crazy man who locked himself in a room and vandalized a Nintendo store because Nintendo doesn’t give out SDKs to crazy people. I’d love if this sort of idea came to fruition, but in this instance, it isn’t going to happen, namely because the person who’s talking about this is mentally unstable, and this is all a fantasy in his head.

Anyone who get’s excited by this should follow the past development of the OpenPandora. Which was an exciting project. But from early prototype to shipping took them 2 years!

It’s also saying that it’s faster then the Nintendo DS. But the NDS speed comes from the GFX chip, no word about the GFX chip, so my guess would be, software rendering.

I have a GP2X, it’s a nice machine, and it has about the same specs as this mystery machine. And the biggest flaw of the GP2X is it’s weak GFX chip. (It can do some accelerated 2D blitting, but that’s it)
People can do amazing things in ASM, but it’s time consuming.
It’s second flaw is the lack of touchscreen, DPad controls don’t work for all types of games. So it’s limiting itself to certain games.

It’s biggest plus over the GP2X will be the Wifi. When we can order this device I might get one, just for the WiFi and to tinker around with it. An average ARM development board with LCD costs more.

Ahaha the SDK is just “make an SDL game at 320×240”. How the fuck is this “16-bit” system-on-a-chip $20 shitthing going to use a software 2D library the sole purpose of which is to sacrifice performance for portability? Even the DS and its brethren require optimised, platform-specific C to get sensible performance. This is a joke, right?

The more I read about that kid, the more unstable he seems. t&p is right, he shows almost every attribute of asburgers. The fact that he supposeably worked on a game for 5 years, without ever checking that the thing was even viable, or that he would get approval. If nothing else, that’s utterly fucking stupid.

I doubt that there is any hardware design, or any real software design. Dataflashsabot is right, there is no way that any sort of game is going to be running on this hardware without some serious optimisation.

I especially liked this post by the kid. No wonder nintendo wants nothing to do with him. Quote follows.

THAT IS NOT ME!! IT’S NOT ME!!!
SOMEONE CAME INTO MY HOUSE
THEY CAME INTO MY HOUSE!!!
THEY WENT THROUGH EVERYTHING, WENT THROUGH MY PC, FILE TIMESTAMPS CHANGED, FOOTPRINTS, EVERYTHING MOVED, DOOR UNLOCKED
THEY TRIED TO OPEN THE SAFE
MY PC IS KEYLOGGED
12 HOURS OF CAMERA FOOTAGE WAS DELETED
CAMERA WAS UNPLUGGED WHEN I WOKE UP
I WAS SLEEPING!!
THEY DID IT WHILE I WAS SLEEPING!!
THIS IS NOT PART OF THE PLAN
THIS IS NOT A JOKE
THEY MADE HANAFUDA CARDS FOR 50 YEARS
THAT IS A YAKUZA GAME
THEY ARE THE JAPANESE MAFIA
THEY ARE THE JAPANESE MAFIA
THEY ARE THE JAPANESE MAFIA
THEY ARE THE JAPANESE MAFIA
THEY ARE THE JAPANESE MAFIA
THINK ABOUT IT!!
THEY WANT TO SILENCE ME
FOR A REASON!
IT’S EITHER THEM OR ALIENS
I’M PRETTY SURE IT’S NOT ALIENS
I’D RATHER IT BE ALIENS !

Anyone with any hardware background _knows_ there is no way this could ever be made for $20… I’m surprised Hack A Day fell for it. I bet Bob _believes_ he can, but I think he’s falling victim to the “All you have to do is…” trap. As I was watching the video of Bob’s Game, all I kept thinking was “How sad…” I sort of wish I could write games, but heck, my attention span isn’t long enough to even _play_ video games, so my dreams of a software artist are dashed…

Bought my PSP knock off for a PENNY plus $20.00 shipping on lastminuteauction. It is under media players as an MP5 player. Can run any Nintendo based game system emulator up to n64. Also has an FM radio and plays 264 xvid. Good luck.